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Ballet in three acts with choreography and libretto by MacMillan, music by Tchaikovsky, Fritz Winckel, Rudiger Rufer, and Martinů, and design by B. Kay. Premiered 22 Jul. 1971 by Royal Ballet at Covent Garden, London, with Seymour, Beriosova, Rencher, Sibley, and Dowell. It was inspired by Anna Andersen's book I Anastasia in which she narrates her life-story as the youngest and only surviving daughter of Tsar Nicholas II. (At the time of the ballet's creation, it was uncertain whether Andersen's claims to be Anastasia were correct. Subsequent evidence has proved them to be fantasy.) In Act I, set to Tchaikovsky's 1st Symphony, A. and her family are seen at an idyllic picnic which is interrupted by news of the outbreak of the First World War. In Act II, set to Tchaikovsky's 3rd Symphony, a ball given for A. by the Tsar at the Winter Palace is disrupted by the outbreak of the October Revolution. Act III is presented in a radically different style. Set to electronic music and Martinů's Fantaisies symphoniques, it takes place in a Berlin hospital where Andersen is a patient. Events from Anastasia's past appear in dance and mime flashback, also in the form of old newsreel footage and Andersen's traumatized response to these memories/fantasies is conveyed in a rawly expressionist style of movement that is very different from the classical choreography of the first two acts. The ballet originally consisted of Act III alone and in this form was premiered 25 Jun. 1967 by the Berlin Opera Ballet with design by Kay, and Seymour as Andersen-Anastasia. This single-act version has since been revived for Stuttgart Ballet (with Haydée, 1976), American Ballet Theatre (1985), and English National Ballet (with Seymour, 1989). A revised version of the three-act ballet, overseen by Deborah MacMillan with new designs by Bob Crowley, was premiered by the Royal Ballet 2 May 1996 with Durante and revived by ABT in 1999.